


To Make A Home

by mozbee



Category: Shazam! (2019)
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Emotional Hurt/Comfort
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-12
Updated: 2020-01-12
Packaged: 2021-02-27 06:34:48
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,102
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22222660
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mozbee/pseuds/mozbee
Summary: “Okay, the last person I ever hugged was my mom, okay? And every time I think about it, I remember her leaning into me, and I remember how her hair smelled, and how her arms felt around me, and if I hug anyone I’m going to forget that, so I don’t hug people, not even Darla even though I can see that it makes her sad, but,” he’s a little breathless and thinks he sounds desperate, “I don’t want to forget what it felt like to hug my mom.”Freddy’s arms have dropped to his sides and he’s leaning back against the edge of his bed. “Oh,” he says, and Billy rushes on.“And I’m scared that when I do find her, she’s going to try to hug me and I’m going to stand there like an idiot because I don’t know where to put my arms or if I’m allowed to lean on her, and what if she just looks at me like I’m stupid and thinks ‘well it’s a good thing I lost him because he’s a moron’, and I just—” he huffs out all his breath in one exhale and runs his hands through his hair. “I just really want her to like me.”---Billy knows it's stupid, but he just really wants to make sure he knows how to hug his mother when he finds her, one day.
Comments: 9
Kudos: 92





	To Make A Home

Don’t laugh, but Billy Batson hasn’t hugged anyone since he was a kid.

He can remember his last hug, too. It was from his mom, around the time he ran away at the winter carnival. He remembers her helping him step into his boots, laying his hands on her shoulders for balance, and she tied his laces tight and then looked up at him, and smiled even though her eyes were sad. She leaned forward, still on her knees, and wrapped her arms tight around him, the perfect hug like always, her head close to his, her chest pressed against him, and he’d fisted his hands in the back of her shirt and held on, loving her for loving him.

It all went downhill from there.

A few hours after he got his compass he was sitting on a bed in a room with seven other boys, some as old as ten. Billy was the youngest. He had very politely told the policeman that his mother was at the winter carnival and he had to go home to her.

_“Do you know your address, Billy? Do you know where you live?”_

Yes, Billy knew where he lived. It was an apartment building with eight floors and Mrs. Candida in the apartment next door. She made churros every week and let Billy have one when they were fresh, even if dinner was soon.

_“Do you know your mom’s name, Billy?”_

Yes, her name was Mom. Billy had already _said_ that. But for some reason they couldn’t find her. Billy had suggested they go back to the carnival to look for her but that didn’t happen. Instead, they took him to the police station and gave him hot chocolate that made his stomach hurt. Then he met a woman who looked very nervous, and couldn’t even look Billy in the eye. Her hands moved like butterflies, flitting around in front of her, thin fingers tapping her collarbone, until finally the adults decided something and she tried to take his hand.

Billy screamed at her.

He knew better than to go off with some stranger. Mom had taught him not to go anywhere with someone he didn’t know unless they were a policeman with a badge. He had tried to explain to the police man that he couldn’t go with a stranger.

_“Mrs. Ebson might be a stranger, but she’s a nice woman who helps kids like you, kids who can’t find their parents and need someone to stay with where they can be safe until their parents come back._ ” The officer, named Jared, had smiled and said, _“I know that she’s safe to go with. And I’ll drive you there, does that sound good?”_

Billy liked Jared. He had found Billy when Billy got lost, and he’d given him a blanket and let Billy sit on his police car while they waited for his mother to come get him. If Jared would go with him to wherever Mrs. Ebson lived, then maybe it would be okay.

The house looked nice when Jared stopped the car in the driveway. He’d helped Billy out of the car, and held his hand as they walked up to the front door, following Mrs. Ebson. But when she opened the front door, Billy had shrunk back, the sight of so many kids in one house daunting. There were boys running up and down the stairs, kicking toy trucks through the living room, and two fighting over a remote.

_“You’ll be in the room at the top of the stairs,”_ Mrs. Ebson had told him, and tried to take his other hand and pull him away from Jared, but Billy yanked his hand out of hers and clung to Jared. Jared took him to the kitchen, where there were no other boys, no Mrs. Ebson, and Billy began sobbing.

_“I don’t want a new mom,_ ” he told Jared. He felt sick, scared; he just wanted his own mom back. She didn’t know where he was, she must be so scared. Jared had laid both hands on Billy’s shoulders, looking sad.

“ _You aren’t getting a new mom, Billy,_ ” Jared said. “ _Mrs. Ebson is going to look after you until we can find your mom, okay? She just wants to help you._ ”

When Billy had to say goodbye to Jared, Jared gave him a rectangle of paper that had a lot of words Billy couldn’t read and a long number that he could. _“This is the number you can call to talk to me,”_ Jared told him. _“And you can call me whenever you want to, all right?”_

Billy had held the stiff paper tight between his fingers as he watched Jared slowly back out of the driveway and leave. He watched the car disappear down the street, wishing Jared would have put the lights on like he did when he drove Billy. Mrs. Ebson asked him if he wanted anything to eat, and one of the older boys ran by and yelled, “ _yeah, a shit sandwich!_ ” that made the other boys laugh and Mrs. Ebson sigh and shake her head.

Billy learned later that that older boy was called Josh and a lot of the other boys were afraid of him. He was only ten but he had been arrested for stealing. Billy didn’t know kids could get arrested. He bet that it hadn’t been Jared to arrest him, Jared was too nice.

Josh was mean.

Josh woke Billy up his third night there to tell him that his mom was dead and he was never going to see her again. Billy tried not to cry because he knew it wasn’t true but it scared him, and then Josh grabbed Billy’s fingers and bent them back and Billy screamed when his Peter pointer popped and then fell, hanging limply from his hand. Mrs. Ebson had come running into the room with her hair in the same fuzzy pink curlers Mrs. Candida wore and Josh told her Billy fell off the bed and hurt himself.

Jared picked Billy up and took him to the hospital where he learned a new word, dis-lo-cate. The doctor hurt Billy’s finger even more when he fixed it and Billy cried again and asked Jared where his mom was. Jared never answered him so instead Billy told him he didn’t want to go back to Mrs. Ebson’s house because of what Josh did to him. Jared looked mad when Billy told him how Josh had bent his fingers back, and Billy thought he was in trouble but Jared promised him he wasn’t, and he swore Billy wouldn’t have to go back to Mrs. Ebson’s house.

And Billy didn’t.

He went to a lot of other houses, some with a bunch of kids, some with only a couple others. Some were worse than Mrs. Ebson’s. There was one house Billy went to when he was ten that even years later he can’t think about without feeling like he’s about to throw up, and he thinks maybe Mrs. Ebson’s wouldn’t have been so bad. Some of the adults who ran the homes were nice, so nice it felt like sucking on a spoonful of sugar, making his teeth ache. Some of those ones were the scariest.

Billy doesn’t trust nice people. Being nice means you’re hiding something or you want something. And even though it might be stupid, he’s never hugged anyone since the last time he hugged his mother. Even though its been ten years since he saw her, sometimes he can close his eyes and remember her last hug, remember how her arms felt wrapped around him, how her hair smelled, the rhythm of her heart gently pounding against his chest. He doesn’t know when he made the decision, but it’s cemented in him: he won’t hug anyone again, unless it’s his mother. She was his last, she’ll be his first.

Except there’s something he’s scared of.

What if he doesn’t remember how to hug her?

He sees students at school hug each other, and the way their arms are, where their hands are positioned, where they lean their heads, all look so awkward. And there must be a different way to hug your mom than your friend or boyfriend or girlfriend, right? What if, when Billy finally finds her, he hugs his mom wrong? What if he ruins their reunion by leaning too much into her, or getting his hair in her mouth? This is the stuff that keeps him up at night, that makes his heart race and his palms sweat, and it’s such a stupid thing that he—

“Dude, I can like, _feel_ you brooding up there,” Freddy’s voice cuts through the quiet. Billy frowns at the spackled ceiling.

“What are you talking about?” he scoffs. Freddy huffs a breath and Billy hears the mattress creak under shifting weight.

“You’ve been rolling around for an hour, you keep sighing like Lady Macbeth, and I’m getting second-hand anxiety from you.” A crutch waves around in the air beside Billy’s bunk. “White flag, let’s parlay. That’s pirate speak for ‘talk’ if you didn’t know.”

Billy rolls onto his side and smacks the crutch away. “Just go back to sleep, Freddy.”

“Okay,” Freddy agrees easily, “when you do.”

“Whatever,” Billy mutters. He buries his face in his pillow and closes his eyes, willing himself to go to sleep. His mind runs rampant, remembering everything from the last time he saw his mother to Darla throwing her arms around him in the school hall. He thinks of Jared and how long its been since he talked to him, and makes a mental note to call him in the morning. Maybe Jared would know something this time. Billy abruptly blinks his eyes open and barely stifles a shout when he sees a face peering at him between the railing on his bed.

“Can’t sleep?” Freddy asks, and Billy glares at him.

“Why are you just standing there in the dark like some creep?” Billy hisses. He sits up and throws his covers off, stomping down the ladder and over to the desk, switching the lamp on and turning to Freddy who shrugs, unapologetic.

“I told you, I can literally feel you thinking and it’s messing with my sleep,” Freddy says. He’s dropped to sit on the edge of his bed, squinting slightly from the light. “Why don’t you just unload, get it off your chest, maybe you’ll be able to sleep.”

“It’s not something you just talk about,” Billy says. What, is he supposed to say _I don’t know how to hug someone_?

“Why not?”

“Because,” Billy says, feeling frustrated. He leaves it at that, folds his arms then drops them at his side again, feeling awkward under Freddy’s eye.

“Oh, well, why didn’t you just say so,” Freddy mutters. He flops back on his bed and rolls to his side. “If you don’t want to talk about it, then I’m going back to sleep, and I don’t want to be kept up by your brooding.” His tone is light and Billy can still hear the underlying concern in his voice. He turns the lamp off and watches the lump under the blankets that is Freddy.

He considers.

-

-

-

“Okay, so it’s totally stupid.”

Freddie blinks over his comic book at Billy. “What are you talking about?”

“Uh,” already Billy regrets talking himself into confiding in Freddy, he’s going about it all wrong, “that thing that I didn’t want to talk about a couple nights ago.” Freddy’s expression clears.

“Oh, that,” and he snaps his comic shut and leans forward on his bed. “You gonna spill?”

“Yes,” Billy says, “but I meant it. It’s really stupid, so, like—”

“I don’t care if it’s stupid. It probably isn’t even,” Freddy says kindly. Billy shakes his head and pushes up from his seat at the desk, clicking his pen _in out in out in out_ as he paces.

“No, like it’s borderline, just—” Billy cuts himself off and looks at Freddy. “Actually, never mind?” he suggests. Freddy snaps his fingers at him, shaking his head.

“Uh uh, don’t blue ball me. Just spit it out, and look, even if it is that stupid, I won’t let on, okay?”

Billy groans and tosses his pen at the desk. “Fuck, Freddy, that’s not what ‘blue balls’ means, you know.”

“Stop deflecting,” Freddy shoots back.

“Don’t pressure me,” Billy snaps. “If you hadn’t been giving me those weird looks and _sighing_ at me all week, I wouldn’t even feel like telling you this.” Freddy sighs.

“If you weren’t so obviously upset about this—”

“I’m not upset.”

“—I wouldn’t bug you about it,” Freddy talks over him. He chews his lip, looking thoughtful. “Remember a few weeks ago when Brett called me the ‘discount orphan’, and said the only reason I have this family is cause they get the disability grant from the government?”

Billy nods; he remembers Freddy laughing at Brett and Burke, uncaring.

“Yeah, well, that night in the shower I bawled like a baby, cause he said exactly what my birth father used to say to me, that the only good in me was being crippled and getting the monthly check, and I’m always afraid of Rosa and Victor only keeping me around for the same reason.”

Billy frowns, and protests immediately. “Freddy, you know that would never—” Freddy holds up a hand.

“Been there, dealt with the emotional crises weeks ago, Billy boy.” He looks up at Billy, expression open. “So, there’s my embarrassing thing that I felt stupid about for a few days.” He grins. “Your turn.”

“I don’t know how to hug,” the words escape unbidden and Billy immediately flushes. He risks a glance at Freddy, who just looks a little confused.

“You don’t know how to hug?”

“Or like, I’m scared to,” Billy nods, and begins wishing for the floor to open up and swallow him whole. He wouldn’t even Shazam his way out of it. Freddy’s just kind of gaping at him. “Say something before I throw myself out the window,” he pleads. Freddy’s face clears and he grins up at Billy.

“Well, shit. Is that it?” He gets to his feet, foregoing his crutch as he stands in front of his bed, and spreads his arms wide. “It’s not hard,” he says encouragingly when Billy just looks at him.

“There’s still more stupid,” Billy warns. He resumes pacing, and chews off a fingernail before looking back at Freddy. “Okay, the last person I ever hugged was my mom, okay? And every time I think about it, I remember her leaning into me, and I remember how her hair smelled, and how her arms felt around me, and if I hug anyone I’m going to forget that, so I don’t hug people, not even Darla even though I can see that it makes her sad, but,” he’s a little breathless and thinks he sounds desperate, “I don’t want to forget what it felt like to hug my mom.”

Freddy’s arms have dropped to his sides and he’s leaning back against the edge of his bed. “Oh,” he says, and Billy rushes on.

“And I’m scared that when I do find her, she’s going to try to hug me and I’m going to stand there like an idiot because I don’t know where to put my arms or if I’m allowed to lean on her, and what if she just looks at me like I’m stupid and thinks ‘well it’s a good thing I lost him because he’s a moron’, and I just—” he huffs out all his breath in one exhale and runs his hands through his hair. “I just really want her to like me.”

“Dude,” Freddy says, and he sits down, and pats the mattress beside him. Billy obediently crosses the room and sits, picking at his nails. “So, she’s your mom, right?” It’s rhetorical but Billy nods anyway. “So of course you love her, and you’ve spent all these years without her, and maybe you’ve built her up in your head, or maybe you haven’t but,” he faces Billy, looking pained, “kids like us, we get thrown away. We get forgotten.”

“I got lost,” Billy tells him. He feels like the distinction is important. Freddy nods slowly.

“Yeah, you’re different,” he allows, “but. I just—” Freddy stops and shakes his head.

“What?” Billy prompts.

“I just don’t want you to have this rose-coloured view of her, if she doesn’t deserve it.” Freddy smirks down at his lap. “Some of them don’t deserve it.”

“I know that,” Billy point out. He thinks back to Harry Campbell, Francine Stoll, and repeats, “I know that.”

“It’s just easier, isn’t it, pretending they’re infallible, that if you just stopped screwing up, everything would be fine. Look,” he says, and faces Billy, “my parents were pieces of shit. Even they would admit to that. But it wasn’t until I lived here for a few months that I realized that. So, I just don’t want you to get burned the way I did. Rosa and Victor, they’re actually good people. They’ve been through the system, they get it.”

“My mother is a good person,” Billy says coldly. “I just got lost.” Freddy seems to read something in his expression because he backs off.

“I’m happy for you. I hope that when you find her, it’s perfect.” They lapse into silence. “How many foster homes were you in before here?” Freddy asks after a while. Billy shrugs.

“A few.” _Eleven._

“Yeah. I came here straight from my birth parents. I got lucky, I guess. What about you?”

“What about me?”

“Did you get lucky?”

“What do you mean _lucky_.”

“Like, were they good places?”

Billy thinks about the two houses Jared pulled him out of, Mrs. Ebson’s and Harry Campbell’s, and the houses Jared didn’t know about because Billy learned to a) keep his mouth shut and b) throw a punch. “I don’t know,” he tells Freddy. “What makes one good?”

“Well, they have adults who respect you. And care about you, even when they don’t have to. And they’re nice,” Freddy finishes. “I don’t know, maybe that makes me sound naïve. And maybe, if you got stuck in shitty homes, that makes you idolize your mother no matter what she did.”

“We got separated because I wandered away,” Billy snaps, and he stands, crosses to his dresser to pull out his pajamas. “I’m going to brush my teeth,” he says, and even to himself it sounds like a warning. Freddy just nods and disappears under his blanket. Billy takes his pajamas to the bathroom to change, and after, as he’s watching himself brush his teeth in the mirror, he imagines himself as his alter ego, a hero, who everyone will love no matter what, and he hopes that his mother, wherever she is, watches the news, and see this new hero, and appreciates him. He grins to himself when he thinks of revealing himself to his mother as both her son and the Philadelphian hero. Major brownie points, he figures.

Freddy is a still mass under the blankets when Billy goes back to their room. He pauses at the foot of his ladder, thinks of words to toss at Freddy, but ultimately decides against it. It can wait til morning.

-

-

-

“So,” Freddy says later, when they’ve all reverted back to their regular old, normal teen selves, and withstood the tirade from Rosa, supported by a silent Victor who nodded at all the right parts in his wife’s speech, and their various aches are in different stages of mending. They’re laying side by side on Freddy’s bed, and Billy is tired in a way he didn’t know existed. He grunts to show he’s listening but can’t manage much more than that. “How’d the hug go?”

Billy’s tired mind doesn’t make the connection. “What hug? I didn’t hug anyone. If you’re counting when the Sin grabbed me through the booth, don’t.”

“No,” Freddy yawns, feigning nonchalance, “with your mom.” Billy tenses, because between the call from Freddy about Sivana in their home, to getting his ass kicked in an alternate dimension and at the winter carnival, he’d been able to push down the memory. Now Freddy’s gone and unearthed it, and holds it out to Billy innocently.

“I didn’t hug anyone,” Billy repeats, and he goes to roll off the bunk, annoyed at how fast his heart is pounding, like it’s eager for attention, calling out to him that it hurts and needs to not. A hand on his wrist stops his exit from the bed, and against his instincts, he turns to look at Freddy, who is sitting up, the exhaustion absent from his expression.

“Did you find her?” Freddy asks, hushed. Billy tugs his wrist free and looks away, across the room at the desk buried under a mess of textbooks and comics. He nods, not trusting himself with much more than that. “That bad, huh,” Freddy goes on, and Billy digs his fingers into his thigh. He nods again. “Well, screw her,” Freddy declares. “I mean, if you’re the kind of woman who can misplace an entire child like he’s car keys or something, like, get your head out of the clouds you hippie. I bet her name is Parsley and she doesn’t shave her legs—”

Billy snorts and almost grins, but he’s suddenly horribly aware of the tears on his face, the tremble in his lower lip. “Fuck,” he says weakly, and buries his face in his hands, sniffling. He feels Freddy shift closer, and shivers at the hand that is laid tentatively on his back. “It’s so _stupid_ ,” he says, then shakes his head and amends: “I’m stupid.”

“Hey—”

“What did I think, that she couldn’t ever find me if she’d taken just a minute to _look_?” He wipes his face angrily and stands, stops a few feet from the bed, hands clenched into fists at his sides. “I wasted all those years looking for her, and she never wanted me to find her. She never wanted me in the first place,” and he knows how pitiful he sounds, voice tight, shaky, begging for something he can’t name. “Sorry,” he says to Freddy through his tears, because this hurts more than getting slammed around by supernatural thugs and that shouldn’t be true.

“Billy,” he hears before he’s jerked around and pulled into a clumsy embrace. He circles his arms around Freddy, feels hands at the small of his back, arms wrapped tight around his ribs, and he doesn’t even care that there’s some hair in his mouth, because this, surrounded by another person, is something he’s been missing for eleven years.

He leans into Freddy, and forgets the feel of his mother’s head against his shoulder. He closes his eyes and smells Freddy, smells laundry detergent and faint hints of cologne, Freddy’s latest venture in self-care. He hugs Freddy, and the years-long molds left in him from the last time his mother hugged him soften and work themselves to accommodate Freddy.

“You were so worried about looking stupid,” Freddy mutters against him. “Turns out your mother was the stupid one all along.” He leans back suddenly, a little off-balance since his crutch sits forgotten in the corner, and squints up at Billy. “I’m not gonna go to your mom and hug her to help her, though, so…”

Billy chokes out a laugh and shoves Freddy onto his bed, flopping next to him. They’re quiet, and the house is quiet around them. “I am sorry,” Freddy says, his arm warm against Billy’s. “Whatever happened with your mom, that’s really shitty. You didn’t deserve that. And she never deserved you,” Freddy says fiercely, like he can sense Billy’s rising protest. “So just, stay here, okay? Cause we all want you here, and Rosa would kick your ass if you ran away, and honestly, I would help her, and now that I can fly, you know I’ll be able to keep up with you.”

“You always could,” Billy says, and Freddy blinks at him. “I dunno,” Billy says to the unasked question. “Just, your leg…it never would have kept you from keeping up with me.”

Freddy whistles low. “I think we’re having some breakthroughs here,” he says and he’s grinning like he always is, the unflappable Freddy. He nudges against Billy and sighs. “I’m glad you came here, Billy. I needed someone like you in my life.”

“Someone to give you super powers?” Billy asks with a grin.

“Ah,” Freddy shrugs and burrows into the blankets, “we’ve always been superheroes."

**Author's Note:**

> I miss Shazam so much but I fall in and out of fandoms so easily and I've been dry on Shazam since last summer but I really hope I can get inspired to get back into it, it seems like the fandom has slowed down a bunch, and the answer to that is ANOTHER MOVIE thank you. Anyways, I fell back into angst and feelings about these boys so here we are, they just write themselves, my gawd. 100% eager to finish my Five Times fic and do it justice. I may just be yelling into a vast ether with this but I don't care, this is for me anyways.


End file.
